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A review by laurenkd89
El Jefe: The Stalking of Chapo Guzmán by Alan Feuer
2.0
I'll be honest, this book was not very entertaining to me. I chose it because it's half-inside my comfort zone (true crime, "riveting" nonfiction retellings) and half-outside my comfort zone (espionage/military history or thrillers). My experience ended up being more on the "outside my comfort zone" side of the spectrum.
I'm not very familiar with Chapo Guzmán and his work, nor am I familiar with the U.S.'s various missions to "stalk" and capture him. Maybe if I were already more knowledgeable about this topic, the little details - the insider information provided by key interviews with agents, witnesses, etc. - would have been more impressive to me. There's no doubt that this book contains a vast amount of detail, more than has ever been publicly released before. For fans of the story, this is a gold mine. But having never read about El Chapo before, much of this seemed humdrum.
A lot of the story is about the process of the Mexican and U.S. governments intercepting communications within Chapo's network - getting the Blackberry Messenger PINs, getting data from a cellphone software called FlexiSpy, etc. Although I get how huge this is for collecting incriminating information and location data on the kingpin and his staff, it's not very interesting to read about. Again, for those who know a lot about military intelligence and espionage, this is probably fascinating - but I found it a bit dry. Even the more salacious parts of the story - Chapo's escape from Mexico's highest-security prison - were not told in as riveting a way as Narcos tells it. The audiobook was well-narrated, but it just didn't capture my attention as I was hoping it would.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ARC!
I'm not very familiar with Chapo Guzmán and his work, nor am I familiar with the U.S.'s various missions to "stalk" and capture him. Maybe if I were already more knowledgeable about this topic, the little details - the insider information provided by key interviews with agents, witnesses, etc. - would have been more impressive to me. There's no doubt that this book contains a vast amount of detail, more than has ever been publicly released before. For fans of the story, this is a gold mine. But having never read about El Chapo before, much of this seemed humdrum.
A lot of the story is about the process of the Mexican and U.S. governments intercepting communications within Chapo's network - getting the Blackberry Messenger PINs, getting data from a cellphone software called FlexiSpy, etc. Although I get how huge this is for collecting incriminating information and location data on the kingpin and his staff, it's not very interesting to read about. Again, for those who know a lot about military intelligence and espionage, this is probably fascinating - but I found it a bit dry. Even the more salacious parts of the story - Chapo's escape from Mexico's highest-security prison - were not told in as riveting a way as Narcos tells it. The audiobook was well-narrated, but it just didn't capture my attention as I was hoping it would.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ARC!